Key takeaways
- Five9 shows no running total of recorded hours; measure the recording files on the FTP or SFTP server your administrator configured under Export > Recordings in VCC Administrator.
- Five9 keeps audio for the sooner of 30 days or a successful upload, call logs for 60 days and contact session data for 120 days, unless your contract or the law says otherwise.
- Copy the WAV files from your server to long-term storage and export call log reports for the dates Five9 still holds; check whether Delete after uploading is ticked.
- You don't need to export anything to apply: have the hours you stored, the age of your oldest recording and your agent count ready, and the data vendor anonymizes the records before any AI lab sees them.
01
What is Five9 data, and why do AI labs and data vendors buy it?
The short answer
Five9 data is the set of recorded customer calls, chats and emails handled by a company's contact center, together with the call logs that say when each one happened and which campaign it belonged to. AI labs (companies that build and train AI models) and data vendors (companies that anonymize business records and package them for those labs) buy a copy because the recordings show trained agents working through real customer problems from the first question to the resolution.
What a Five9 account records
Five9 is cloud software that runs a contact center, which is a team of agents who answer customer calls, chats and emails, or place outbound calls, for a business. A campaign is a defined batch of this work, such as a support line or a sales outreach. Five9 can record the calls an agent handles, and each recording is stored as a WAV audio file.
Alongside the audio, Five9 keeps call log reports with each call's date, length and campaign. It also stores contact session data, which describes each customer interaction, and transcripts of chats and emails.
Why a recorded support call teaches an AI model something
An AI model learns by studying a very large number of examples and finding the patterns in them, and those examples are called training data. A contact center recording shows a complete service interaction: the customer describes a problem, the agent asks questions, and the call ends with a resolution or a hand-off. Matched to its call log entry, the conversation also carries its campaign, date and length.
AI labs now want to train AI agents, software that carries out a job step by step, and handling customer calls is exactly such a job. A data vendor can turn anonymized transcripts into worked examples that an agent studies like an answer key. The full mechanism is in AI training data: why AI companies want your company's data.
How Five9 fits into a dataset
Five9 is one of several sources in a company's dataset, which usually also includes email, a CRM and documents. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to. The price covers the whole dataset, not each source on its own, and what your data is worth explains what moves it.
02
Where does Five9 show how much call data you have?
The short answer
Five9 does not show a running total of recorded hours. It uploads each recording to the FTP or SFTP server your administrator set up in VCC Administrator, and it keeps its own copy only briefly. Your total is therefore the hours of audio your company still holds on that server or wherever else the files were moved.
How to work out your recorded hours
FTP and SFTP are two standard ways of copying files to a server, and SFTP adds encryption. The steps below measure the archive your company built from those uploads.
- Ask your Five9 administrator where the recordings go. That destination is chosen in the FTP settings inside the VCC Administrator application.
- Open that FTP or SFTP server, or the place your team later moved the files to, and add up the audio length of the recordings.
- If you can see only file sizes, time a sample of calls to learn how many hours fit in a gigabyte, then apply that rate to the total size.
- Run a call log report in Five9 for the recent dates it still has, and compare the total talk time with your recording hours to see whether the two roughly agree.
Who can see what
A Five9 administrator manages recording uploads in VCC Administrator. Access to reports depends on the reporting permissions that administrator has granted.
Why Five9 itself cannot give an all-time total
Five9 publishes short retention periods, and it tells customers to download this data and keep it on their own premises, in its data retention policies. Older calls exist only if your team kept the files that Five9 uploaded. The table sets out the periods Five9 lists.
| Data | How long Five9 keeps it |
|---|---|
| Audio recordings | The sooner of 30 days or a successful FTP or SFTP upload, unless your contract says otherwise. |
| Call logs | 60 days, apart from any longer period that state or federal law requires. Downloaded through Call Log Reports. |
| Contact session data | 120 days. Downloaded through Contact Data Reports. |
| GenAI Suite call transcripts and summaries | A period you configure, up to 60 days. |
03
What should you know about your Five9 data before you apply?
The short answer
Have three facts ready: how many hours of Five9 recordings your company still stores, how many years they cover and how many agent users are licensed. They go into the data manifest, the written summary of which apps hold your records, how many years each covers and roughly how much. You don't need to run an export to find them, and applying through micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, shares no data.
The hours of recorded audio
Five9 is measured in hours, and the hours that count are the ones your company stored. If recordings were never copied off Five9's servers, the audio is probably gone, because Five9 removes it at 30 days at the latest.
The years of history
For years of history, use the date of the oldest recording you still hold, not the date you started with Five9. A company that signed up in 2019 but began copying recordings to its own server in 2022 has about four years of audio, not seven.
The number of agent users
The count is the number of licensed agent users, meaning the people who are set up to take or place calls in Five9.
What you don't need to do first
You don't need to export anything to apply, and you don't need to clean or scrub an export. The data vendor anonymizes the records before anyone else sees them, and nothing moves until a lawyer-reviewed license is signed. The application, the intro call and each later step are laid out in how to sell your company's data.
04
How do you export your full Five9 history?
The short answer
A Five9 administrator confirms the FTP or SFTP destination under VCC Administrator, then your team copies the recording files from that server to long-term storage and exports call log reports for the dates Five9 still holds. The Five9 pages we checked describe no way to pull audio older than its retention period, so if recordings were never uploaded, ask your Five9 account team what can still be retrieved.
Confirm where recordings are being uploaded
Five9 sends each recording to your server as it is saved, so the first job is to find that server and check that it works. Five9 sets the default under its FTP settings, and a campaign can override the default.
- Log in to Five9 as an administrator and open VCC Administrator. Open the default FTP settings, choose Actions > Configure, then go to the Export > Recordings tab.
- Read the transfer protocol (FTP or SFTP), the hostname and the user name, and press Test to confirm the connection works. With SFTP and a security key, Five9 asks for the private key file from your server administrator instead of a password.
- Look at the file name pattern. It decides how each file's path and name are built from fields such as the agent name, the campaign name, the date and time, the disposition and the session ID. Add
session_idif you need a unique name for each call. - Check whether Delete after uploading is ticked. If it is, Five9 deletes the WAV file as soon as the transfer finishes, so your server then holds the only copy.
These settings are described in Five9's guide to exporting recordings and transcripts. Campaign FTP settings override the default settings.
Copy the files and the reports
- Copy the recording files, and any transcripts your account produces, from the server to long-term storage. Each recording is a WAV file, and Five9 caps a single recording at one hour, or three hours if Five9 support raises the cap.
- For chat and email transcripts, the Export > Transcripts tab holds a separate FTP setup, which sends transcripts in small batches every few minutes.
- Export call log reports for the recent dates Five9 still has. The reports let you match each recording to the day, campaign and length of its call. Reports can also be scheduled under Export > Scheduled Reports to be emailed and uploaded by FTP.
Five9 notes that matrix reports exported straight to CSV come out with headers that are not formatted correctly, in its guide to FTP settings for reports. Open the report in a spreadsheet program and save it as CSV from there.
The diagram compares what is left a year later when recordings were copied to your own server and when they were not.
What Five9 keeps, and for how long
Five9 removes an audio recording at 30 days or when the upload to your server succeeds, whichever comes first. Call logs go at 60 days, and contact session data goes at 120. A contract or a legal requirement can change those periods. Five9 says extra storage may be available for a fee, depending on the type of data, and the contact is a Five9 sales representative.
If recordings were never uploaded
Your Five9 account team can tell you whether your contract includes extended storage and what is still retrievable. Do not assume older audio can be recovered, because Five9's policy allows it to purge data from its servers.
Sources: Five9, Data Retention Policies and the Basic Admin guide Exporting Recordings and Transcripts. Steps checked against these pages in November 2026.
05
What stays private when Five9 data is licensed?
The short answer
The company decides which campaigns and dates are in scope, and the data vendor removes caller names and phone numbers from recordings and call logs before an AI lab sees anything. The company keeps ownership of its recordings, and the license covers defined records for a defined use.
You choose what is in scope
You pick which campaigns and date ranges to hand over, and the rest stays on your own server. The data vendor also deletes records too sensitive to clean safely instead of anonymizing them, which matters for calls that include card numbers or health details.
Names and numbers are replaced before a lab sees them
Anonymization means replacing every detail that identifies a person, such as a name, a phone number or an account number, with a stand-in that is the same every time it appears. A recording or transcript still plays in order, so a lab can learn how the agent handled the problem, but it no longer says who called. The method, including what is deleted outright and how you review samples, is in how company data is anonymized for AI training.
Ownership and payment
Licensing gives the buyer limited rights to a copy, while the company keeps ownership of the originals. The terms that matter, such as exclusivity, permitted use and deletion, are covered in data licensing. Whether callers were told their calls were recorded is a question for the company's lawyer, and is it legal to sell company data covers it. micro1 pays in full within 30 days of accepting the data, usually as a single payment.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How long does Five9 store call recordings?
Five9 removes an audio recording at 30 days or when the upload to your FTP or SFTP server succeeds, whichever is first, unless your contract says otherwise. Recordings older than that exist only if your company kept the uploaded files.
Where do Five9 recordings end up?
On the FTP or SFTP server your Five9 administrator configured in VCC Administrator, under Export > Recordings. Five9 uploads each recording there as it is saved, so check that server first when you measure your archive.
How far back do Five9 call logs go?
Sixty days, with contact session data kept for 120 days, except where the law or your contract requires longer. Export reports regularly if you want a longer history.
What file format are Five9 recordings in?
WAV. Each recorded call is stored as one WAV file, and a single recording can run for one hour, or up to three hours if Five9 support raises the limit.
Can Five9 delete recordings after uploading them?
Yes. If the Delete after uploading box is ticked in the recording settings, Five9 removes the WAV file as soon as the transfer finishes. Confirm the box before you rely on Five9 as a backup.
Do we need to export Five9 before we apply?
No. The application takes about two minutes and shares no data. You only need your approximate hours of stored recordings, your years of history and your agent count for the intro call. The files are transferred later, after you sign the license.
What is Five9 data worth to AI labs and data vendors?
Five9 history is priced as part of a whole dataset rather than on its own. Companies are paid $100K to $2M or more per dataset, according to micro1, and the price depends on the years of history and how completely the records show each job. What your data is worth explains the factors.
Bottom line
Know what is in Five9, then see what it is worth
You don't need to export anything to apply. Apply in two minutes, describe your records on the intro call, and micro1, the data vendor we typically refer companies to, prices the whole dataset and sends an offer 1–2 days later.
Not legal, tax or financial advice. Figures come from micro1's published pages and public reporting as of November 2026.